The Eyes of Heisenberg

5.

Max Allgood, Central’s chief of Tachy-Security, climbed Administration’s plasmeld steps slightly ahead of his two surgeon companions as befitted the director of the Optimen’s swift and terrible hand of power.

The morning sun behind the trio sent their shadows darting across the white building’s angles and planes.

They were admitted to the silver shadows of the entrance portico where a barrier dropped for the inevitable delay. Quarantine scanners searched and probed them for inimical microbes.

Allgood turned with the patience of long experience in this procedure, studied his companions—Boumour and Igan. It amused him that they must drop their titles here. No doctors were admitted to these precincts. Here they must be pharmacists. The title “doctor” carried overtones which spread unrest among the Optimen. They knew about doctors, but only as ministers to the mere humans. A doctor became a euphemism in here, just as no one said death or kill or implied that a machine or structure would wear out. Only new Optimen in their acolyte apprenticeship, or meres of young appearance served in Central, although some of the meres had been preserved by their masters for remarkable lengths of time.

Boumour and Igan both passed the test of youthfulness, although Boumour’s face was of that pinched-up elfin type which tended to suggest age before its time. He was a big man with heavy shoulders, powerful. Igan looked lean and fragile beside him, a beaked face with long jaw and tight little mouth. The eyes of both men were Optimen color—blue and penetrating. They were probably near-Opts, both of them. Most Central surgeon-pharmacists were.

The pair moved restlessly under Allgood’s gaze, avoiding his eyes. Boumour began talking in a low voice to Igan with one hand on the man’s shoulder moving nervously, kneading. The movement of Boumour’s hand on Igan’s shoulder carried an odd familiarity, a suggestion to Allgood that he had seen something like this somewhere before. He couldn’t place where.

The quarantine probing-scanning continued. It seemed to Allgood that it was lasting longer than usual. He turned his attention to the scene across from the building. It was strangely peaceful, at odds with the mood of Central as Allgood knew it.

Allgood realized that his access to secret records and even to old books gave him an uncommon knowledge about Central. The Optiman demesne reached across leagues of what had once been the political entities of Canada and northern United States. It occupied a rough circle some seven hundred kilometers in diameter and with two hundred levels below ground. It was a region of multitudinous controls—weather control, gene control, bacterial control, enzyme control… human control…

In this little corner, the heart of Administration, the ground had been shaped into an Italian chiaroscuro landscape—blacks and grays with touches of pastels. The Optimen were people who could barber a mountain at a whim: “A little off the top and leave the sideburns.” Throughout Central, nature had been smoothed over, robbed of her dangerous sharpness. Even when the Optimen staged some natural display, it lacked an element of drama which was a general lack in their lives.

Allgood often wondered at this. He had seen pre-Optiman films and recognized the differences. Central’s manicured niceties seemed to him all tied up with the omnipresent red triangles indicating pharmacy outlets where the Optimen might check their enzyme prescriptions.

“Are they taking a long time about it or is it just me?” Boumour asked. His voice carried a rumbling quality.

“Patience,” Igan said. A mellow tenor there.

“Yes,” Allgood said. “Patience is a man’s best ally.”

Boumour looked up at the Security chief, studying, wondering. Allgood seldom spoke except for effect. He, not the Optimen, was the Conspiracy’s greatest threat. He was body and soul with his masters, a super puppet. Why did he order us to accompany him today? Boumour wondered. Does he know? Will he denounce us?

There was a special ugliness about Allgood that fascinated Boumour. The Security chief was a stocky little Folk mere with moon face and darting almond eyes, a dark bush of hair low on his forehead—a Shang-cut by the look of his overt gene markers.

Allgood turned toward the quarantine barrier and with a sudden feeling of awakening, Boumour realized the man’s ugliness came from within. It was the ugliness of fear, of created fear and personal fear. The realization gave Boumour an abrupt sensation of relief which he signaled to Igan through finger pressures on the man’s shoulder.

Igan pulled away suddenly to stare out across from the building where they stood. Of course Max Allgood fears, he thought. He lives in a mire of fears, named and nameless… just as the Optimen do… poor creatures.

The scene across from Central began to impress itself on Igan’s senses. Here, at this moment, it was a day of absolute Spring, planned that way in the lordly heart of Weather Control. Administration’s steps looked down on a lake, round and perfect like an enameled blue plate. On a low hill beyond the lake, plasmeld plinths stood out like white stones: elevator caps reaching down into the locked fastness of the Optimen quarters below—two hundred levels.

Far beyond the hill, the sky began to turn dark blue and oily. It was streaked suddenly with red, green and purple fires in a rather flat pattern. Presently, there came a low clap of contained thunder. Across the reaches of Central, some Upper Optiman was staging a tame storm for entertainment.

It struck Igan as a pointless display, lacking danger or drama… which he decided were two words for the same thing.

The storm was the first thing Allgood had seen this day to fit his interpretation of Central’s inner rhythms. Things of an ominous nature set the pattern for his view of Central. People vanished into here never to be seen again and only he, Allgood, the chief of Tachy-Security, or a few trusted agents knew their fate. Allgood felt the thunderclap keyed to his mood, a sound that portended absolute power. Under the storm sky now turning acid yellow and dispersing the air of Spring, the plinths on the hill above the lake became pagan cenotaphs set out against a ground as purple-green as camomile.

“It’s time,” Boumour said.

Allgood turned to find the quarantine barrier lifted. He led the way into the Hall of Counsel with its shimmering adamantine walls above ranks of empty plasmeld benches. The trio moved through tongues of perfumed vapor that swayed aside as they breasted them.

Optiman acolytes wearing green capes fastened at the shoulders with diamond lanulas came from side shadows to pace them. Worked into the green of their robes were shepherd’s pipes of platinum and they swung golden thuribles that wafted clouds of antiseptic pink smoke into the air.

Allgood kept his attention on the end of the hall. A giant globe as red as a mandrake stem hung in walking beams there. It was some forty meters in diameter with a section folded back like a segment cut from an orange to reveal the interior. This was the Tuyere’s control center, the tool of strange powers and senses with which they watched and ruled their minions. Lights flashed in there, phosphor greens and the blue cracklings of arcs. Great round gauges spelled out messages and red lights winked response. Numbers flowed on beams through the air and esoteric symbols danced on ribbons of light

Up through the middle, like the core of the fruit, stretched a white column supporting a triangular platform at the globe’s center. At the points of the triangle, each on a golden plasmeld throne, sat the Optimen trio known as the Tuyere—friends, companions, elected rulers for this century and with seventy-eight years yet to serve. It was a wink of time in their lives, an annoyance, often disquieting because they must face realities which all other Optimen could treat as euphemisms.

The acolytes stopped some twenty paces from the red globe, but continued swinging their thuribles. Allgood moved one pace ahead, motioned Boumour and Igan to halt behind him. The Security chief felt he knew just how far he could go here, that he must go to the limits. They need me, he told himself. But he held no illusions about the dangers in this interview.

Allgood looked up into the globe. A dancing lacery of power placed a deceptive transparency over the interior. Through that curtain could be seen shapes, outlines—now clear, now enfolded.

“I came,” Allgood said.

Boumour and Igan echoed the greeting, reminding themselves of all the protocol and forms which must be observed here: “Always use the name of the Optiman you address. If you do not know the name, ask it humbly.”

Allgood waited for the Tuyere to answer. Sometimes he felt they had no sense of time, at least of seconds and minutes and perhaps not even of days. It might be true. People of infinite lives might notice the passing seasons as clock ticks.

The throne support turned, presenting the Tuyere one by one. They sat in clinging translucent robes, almost nude, flaunting their similarity to the meres. Facing the open segment now was Nourse, a Greek god figure with blocky face, heavy brows, a chest ridged by muscles that rippled as he breathed. How evenly he breathed, with what controlled slowness.

The base turned, presented Schruille, the bone slender, unpredictable one with great round eyes, high cheeks and a flat nose above a mouth which seemed always pulled into a thin line of disapproval. Here was a dangerous one. Some said he spoke of things which other Optimen could not. In Allgood’s presence, Schruille had once said “death,” although referring to a butterfly.

Again, the base turned—and here was Calapine, her robe girdled with crystal plastrons. She was a thin, high-breasted woman with golden brown hair and chill, insolent eyes, full lips and a long nose above a pointed chin. Allgood had caught her watching him strangely on occasion. At such times he tried not to think about the Optimen who took mere playmates.

Nourse spoke to Calapine, looking at her through the prismatic reflector which each throne raised at a shoulder. She answered, but the voices did not carry to the floor of the hall.

Allgood watched the interplay for a clue to their mood. It was known among the Folk that Nourse and Calapine had been bedmates for periods that spanned hundreds of mere lifetimes. Nourse had a reputation of strength and predictability, but Calapine was known as a wild one. Mention her name and likely someone would look up and ask, “What’s she done now?” It was always said with a touch of admiration and fear. Allgood knew that fear. He had worked for other ruling trios, but none who had his measure as did these three… especially Calapine.

The throne base stopped with Nourse facing the open segment. “You came,” he rumbled. “Of course you came. The ox knows its owner and the ass its master’s crib.”

So it’s going to be one of those days, Allgood thought. Ridicule! It could only mean they knew how he had stumbled… but didn’t they always?

Calapine swiveled her throne to look down at the meres. The Hall of Counsel had been patterned on the Roman Senate with false columns around the edges, banks of benches beneath glittering scanner eyes. Everything focused down onto the figures standing apart from the acolytes.

Looking up, Igan reminded himself he had feared and hated these creatures all his life—even while he pitied them. How lucky he’d been to miss the Optiman cut. It’d been close, but he’d been saved. He could remember the hate of his childhood, before it had become tempered by pity. It’d been a clean thing then, sharp and real, blazing against the Givers of Time.

“We came as requested to report on the Durants,” Allgood said. He took two deep breaths to calm his nerves. These sessions were always dangerous, but doubly so since he’d decided on a double game. There was no turning back, though, and no wish to since he’d discovered the dopplegangers of himself they were growing. There could be only one reason they’d duplicate him. Well, they’d learn.

Calapine studied Allgood, wondering if it might be time to seek diversion with the ugly Folk male. Perhaps here was an answer to boredom. Both Schruille and Nourse indulged. She seemed to recall having done that before with another Max, but couldn’t remember if it had helped her boredom.

“Say what it is we give you, little Max,” she said.

Her woman’s voice, soft and with laughter behind it, terrified him. Allgood swallowed. “You give life, Calapine.”

“Say how many lovely years you have,” she ordered.

Allgood found his throat contained no moisture. “Almost four hundred, Calapine,” he rasped.

Nourse chuckled. “Ahead of you stretch many more lovely years if you serve us well,” he said.

It was the closest to a direct threat Allgood had ever heard from an Optiman. They worked their wills by indirection, by euphemistic subtlety. They worked through meres who could face such concepts as death and killing. — Who have they shaped to destroy me? Allgood wondered.

“Many little tick-tock years,” Calapine said.

“Enough!” Schruille growled. He detested these interviews with the underclasses, the way Calapine baited the Folk. He swiveled his throne and now all the Tuyere faced the open segment. Schruille looked at his fingers, the ever youthful skin, and wondered why he had snapped that way. An enzymic imbalance? The thought touched him with disquiet. He generally held his silence during these sessions—as a defense because he tended to get sentimental about the pitiful meres and despise himself for it afterward.

Boumour moved up beside Allgood, said, “Does the Tuyere wish now the report on the Durants?”

Allgood stifled a feeling of rage at the interruption. Didn’t the fool know that the Optimen must always appear to lead the interview?

“The words and images of your report have been seen, analyzed and put away,” Nourse rumbled. “Now, it is the non-report that we wish.”

Non-report? Allgood asked himself. Does he think we’ve hidden something?

“Little Max,” Calapine said. “Have you bowed to our necessity and questioned the computer nurse under narcosis?”

Here it comes, Allgood thought. He took a deep breath, said, “She has been questioned, Calapine.”

Igan took his place beside Boumour, said, “There’s something I wish to say about that if I -”

“Hold your tongue, pharmacist,” Nourse said. “We talk to Max.”

Igan bowed his head, thought, How dangerous this is! And all because of that fool nurse. She wasn’t even one of us. No Cyborg-of-the-register knows her. A member of no cell or platoon. An accidental, a Sterrie, and she puts us in this terrible peril!

Allgood saw that Igan’s hands trembled, wondered, What’s driving these surgeons? They can’t be such fools.

“Was it not a deliberate thing that nurse did?” Calapine asked.

“Yes, Calapine,” Allgood said.

“Your agents did not see it, yet we knew it had to be,” Calapine said. She turned to scan the instruments of the control center, returned her attention to Allgood. “Say now why this was.”

Allgood sighed. “I have no excuses, Calapine. The men have been censured.”

“Say now why the nurse acted thus,” Calapine ordered.

Allgood wet his lips with his tongue, glanced at Boumour and Igan. They looked at the floor. He looked back to Calapine, at her face shimmering within the globe. “We were unable to discover her motives, Calapine.”

“Unable?” Nourse demanded.

“She… ahh… ceased to exist during the interrogation, Nourse,” Allgood said. As the Tuyere stiffened, sitting bolt upright in their thrones, he added, “A flaw in her genetic cutting, so the pharmacists tell me.”

“A profound pity,” Nourse said, settling back.

Igan looked up, blurted, “It could’ve been a deliberate self-erasure, Nourse.”

That damn’ fool! Allgood thought

But Nourse stared now at Igan. “You were present, Igan?”

“Boumour and I administered the narcotics.”

And she died, Igan thought. But we did not kill her. She died and we’ll be blamed for it. Where could she have learned the trick of stopping her own heart? Only Cyborgs are supposed to know and teach it.

“Deliberate… self-erasure?” Nourse asked. Even when considered indirectly, the idea held terrifying implications.

“Max!” Calapine said. “Say now if you used excessive… cruelty.” She leaned forward, wondering why she wanted him to admit barbarity.

“She suffered nothing, Calapine,” Allgood said.

Calapine sat back disappointed. Could he be lying? She read her instruments: Calmness. He wasn’t lying.

“Pharmacist,” Nourse said, “explain your opinion.”

“We examined her carefully,” Igan said. “It couldn’t have been the narcotics. There’s no way…”

“Some of us think it was a genetic flaw,” Boumour said.

“There’s disagreement,” Igan said. He glanced at Allgood, feeling the man’s disapproval. It had to be done, though. The Optimen must be made to know disquiet. When they could be tricked into acting emotionally, they made mistakes. The plan called for them to make mistakes now. They must be put off balance—subtly, delicately.

“Your opinion, Max?” Nourse asked. He watched carefully. They’d been getting poorer models lately, doppleganger degeneration.

“We’ve already taken cellular matter, Nourse,” All-good said, “and are growing a duplicate. If we get a true copy, we’ll check the question of genetic flaw.”

“It is a pity the doppleganger won’t have the original’s memories,” Nourse said.

“Pity of pities,” Calapine said. She looked at Schruille. “Is this not true, Schruille?”

Schruille looked up at her without answering. Did she think she could bait him the way she did the meres?

“This woman had a mate?” Nourse asked.

“Yes, Nourse,” Allgood said.

“Fertile union?”

“No, Nourse,” Allgood said. “A Sterrie.”

“Compensate the mate,” Nourse said. “Another woman, a bit of leisure. Let him think she was loyal to us.”

Allgood nodded, said, “We are giving him a woman, Nourse, who will keep him under constant surveillance.”

A trill of laughter escaped Calapine. “Why has no one mentioned this Potter, the genetic engineer?” she asked.

“I was coming to him, Calapine,” Allgood said.

“Has anyone examined the embryo?” Schruille asked, looking up suddenly.

“No, Schruille,” Allgood said.

“Why not?”

“If this is a concerted action to escape genetic controls, Schruille, we don’t want members of the organization to know we suspect them. Not yet. First, we must learn all about these people—the Durants, their friends, Potter… everyone.”

“But the embryo’s the key to the entire thing,” Schruille said. “What was done to it? What is it?”

“It is bait, Schruille,” Allgood said.

“Bait?”

“Yes, Schruille, to catch whoever else may be involved.”

“But what was done to it?”

“How can that matter, Schruille, as long as we can… as long as we have complete control over it.”

“The embryo is being guarded most adroitly, I hope,” Nourse said.

“Most adroitly, Nourse.”

“Send the pharmacist Svengaard to us,” Calapine ordered.

“Svengaard… Calapine?” Allgood asked.

“You need not know why,” she said. “Merely send him.”

“Yes, Calapine.”

She stood up to signify the end of the interview. The acolytes turned around, still swinging their thuribles, prepared now to escort the meres from the hall. But Calapine was not finished. She stared at Allgood, said, “Look at me, Max.”

He looked, recognizing that strange, studying set to her eyes.

“Am I not beautiful?” she asked.

Allgood stared at her, the slender figure with its outlines softened by the robe and curtains of power within the globe. She was beautiful as were many Optimen females. But the beauty repelled him with its threatening perfection. She would live indefinitely, already had lived forty or fifty thousand years. But one day his lesser flesh would reject the medical replacements and the enzyme prescriptions. He would die while she went on and on and on.

His lesser flesh rejected her.

“You are beautiful, Calapine,” he said.

“Your eyes never admit it,” she said.

“What do you want, Cal?” Nourse asked. “Do you want this… do you want Max?”

“I want his eyes,” she said. “Just his eyes.^”

Nourse looked at Allgood, said, “Women.” His voice held a note of false camaraderie.

Allgood stood astonished. He had never heard that tone from an Optiman before.

“I make a point,” Calapine said. “Don’t interrupt my words with male jokes. In your heart of hearts, Max, how do you feel about me?”

“Ahhhh,” Nourse said. He nodded.

“I shall say it for you,” she said as Allgood remained mute. “You worship me. Never forget that, Max. You worship me.” She looked at Boumour and Igan, dismissed them with a wave of her hand.

Allgood lowered his eves, feeling the truth in her words. He turned, and with the acolytes flanking them, led Igan and Boumour out of the hall.

As they emerged onto the steps, the acolytes held back and the barrier dropped. Igan and Boumour turned left, noting a new building at the end of the long esplanade which fronted Administration. They saw its machicolated walls, the openings fitted with colored filters which sent bursts of red, blue and green light upon the surrounding air, and they recognized that it blocked the way they had intended to take out of Central. A building suddenly erected, another Optiman toy. They saw it and planned their steps accordingly with the automatic acceptance that marked them as regulars in the Optiman demesne. The meres and inhabitants of Central seemed to know their way through the arabesques of its roads and streets by an instinct. The place defied cartographers because the Optimen were too subject to change and whim.

“Igan!”

It was Allgood calling from behind them.

They turned, waited for him to catch up.

Allgood planted himself in front of them, hands on hips, said, “Do you worship her, too?”

“Don’t speak foolishness,” Boumour said.

“No,” Allgood said. His eyes appeared to be sunk in pockets above the high cheekbones. “I belong to no Folk cult, no breeder congregation. How can I worship her?”

“But you do,” Igan said.

“Yes!”

“They are the real religion of our world,” Igan said. “You do not have to belong to a cult or carry a talisman to know this. Calapine merely told you that, if there is a conspiracy, those belonging to it are heretics.”

“Is that what she meant?”

“Of course.”

“And she must know what is done to heretics,” Allgood said.

“Without a doubt,” Boumour said.